By Timothy R. Olsen ’09, M.B.A. ’18

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Long before he was called as an apostle for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and long before he started what eventually became, at one time, the largest maker of fitness equipment in the world, Elder Gary E. Stevenson was an Aggie.  

In fact, he was an Aggie even before he stepped onto Utah State’s campus as a student.

“It was kind of a foregone conclusion for me, I never really thought about attending a different institution,” Stevenson recalls. “It just was very natural for me to become a student at Utah State, and I have fabulous memories of being a student.”

Stevenson’s father, Evan, started his nearly five-decade run of employment at USU in 1955 — the same year Gary was born — as the director of the Student Union Building and coordinator of student activities. It was in that building, which includes the ballroom that bears his father’s name, where he recalls some of his earliest memories. He especially remembers accompanying his father to campus on Saturday mornings where he would have free reign of the building now known as the Taggart Student Center while his dad worked. 

Along with the various student activities Stevenson (’79) attended with his family through the years, he also developed a passion for Utah State University sporting events. He vividly remembers selling game programs at football and men’s basketball games, because that guaranteed him a ticket into the building and allowed him to watch the games once he finished his job. He especially remembers watching his favorite player, Aggie legend Wayne Estes, play. 

“I was in fourth grade when Wayne Estes had his tragic accident,” Stevenson says. “I remember when the phone call came early, early — you know, four or five o’clock in the morning to our house — and [Estes] was my boyhood hero, and dad came down and told me what had happened. I didn’t want to go to school that day, I just wanted to stay home and cry all day.”

While those early memories certainly had a large impact on the 1973 Logan High School graduate, building the foundation of his love for Utah State and Cache Valley, that affinity and affection goes deeper. As someone who has been all over the world and visited dozens of countries and hundreds of communities, Stevenson says there is something unique about USU. 

“The community and the university are kind of a fabric that’s woven together very nicely, and I’ve found that’s just not intuitive in every community that you go into, but it is at Utah State,” he says. “I think it’s part of a culture and when you begin a culture, good elements of a culture perpetuate themselves and negative elements perpetuate themselves. This happens to be a really a nice element that is perpetuating.”

Creating an ICON

Brett Stevenson (’12),  the third of Gary’s four sons — three of whom graduated from USU — was 15 years old when his father was called as a mission president for the church’s Japan Nagoya Mission. He vividly remembers growing up in Japan during those formative years and learning much from his father about service and leadership. However, it wasn’t until Brett had returned from his own mission and enrolled in school at Utah State that he began to really understand who his father was from a temporal perspective. 

“I was interacting with a lot of people that had worked at ICON and had worked with my dad, when I really started to hear what he was like in his professional role. And that was what has had the biggest impact on me — how people spoke about my dad and how he treated them,” Brett says.

“How he cared for them individually and knew them individually as a person and wasn’t too tied up in the bigger picture of the business. He knew people and had an impact on their lives. Hearing them talk about the impact that he had on them personally, and their families, really started to open my eyes to even in business you can have those relationships, and you can have that impact with people that you work with and lead.”

In the late 1970s, Stevenson, along with fellow USU students Scott Watterson and Brad Sorenson, was pursuing a degree in the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business. The trio had all recently returned home from serving church missions, Stevenson from the Japan Fukuoka Mission, Watterson from Taiwan, and Sorenson from the Pacific Islands. 

As Stevenson recalls, it was a group project in his marketing strategy planning class that eventually led to what is now iFit. Initially known as Weslo Design International, the trio — along with early partner Blaine Hancy — incorporated in 1977, two years before they would graduate, and began importing various products such as kitchenware and marble products from Taiwan. Eventually, trampolines were added, which was the company’s initial foray into the health and fitness industry. 

“I knew them before my time at Utah State, but we were also studying business together,” Stevenson says of his friends and business partners. “And it was while we were doing that at Utah State that this idea of the creation of a business germinated and part of the nourishment of that idea that germinated was coming through our coursework.

“I have just clear memories, I could go through course, after course, after course — marketing research, and consumer behavior, and operations research, and economics … there’s just nothing quite like what a university campus and that teaching and learning experience.”

Mixed in with Stevenson’s professional and educational accomplishments in the late ’70s was a personal milestone. In April 1979, just a few weeks before he graduated, he married Lesa Jean Higley (’80). When you factor in the time spent on campus as a boy, the beginning of a multimillion-dollar company, and meeting his spouse of 45 years, it’s no wonder that just the mention of Utah State University brings a smile to his face. 

“It’s really nice to share that love of the university. I shared that with my family and parents and [Lesa] shares that with hers,” Stevenson says. “We were in the community for many years, and so these traditions were just part of our family tradition — going to the football games and the basketball games and attending cultural events. 

“So much of the life of Cache Valley revolves around the university and so much of our family life revolved around the university. Now that we’ve left, we look forward to any opportunity we have; we find a way to get up there to participate in the university activities.”

A Higher Calling

Those opportunities to spend time in Cache Valley or participate in university events, though, are getting harder and harder to come by.   

In 2008, after more than 30 years, Stevenson stepped down as president and chief operating officer of ICON Health & Fitness — formerly Weslo and now iFit — as he accepted a call into full-time church service as a member of the church’s First Quorum of the Seventy in the Asia North Area presidency.

Then, in 2012, he was named presiding bishop of the church, where he oversaw various physical affairs of the church, including natural disaster relief efforts throughout the world. He continued in that calling until October 2015 when he accepted a call to serve as a member of the church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

“There’s never an expectation of full-time church service, but so many of the principles that were foundational for me coming through my experience in the community and at the university have just been remarkable resources for me now in the capacity that I have,” Stevenson says.

“[As a student] I heard somebody say this: remember to learn, remember to earn and remember to serve. And it doesn’t always have to be sequential. While you’re learning and earning you can be serving, but there is ultimately a progression you want to be thinking about. That’s fabulous for any person studying any topic and serving in whatever capacity it might be. And I think that put an imprint upon me trying to be thoughtful about service.”

Be it through his church service, his time leading a multinational company, or within his own home, Stevenson is eager to point out the positive impact his time at Utah State had on him. Meanwhile, his impact continues to be felt throughout the world. 

“I just think some of the coolest stuff is the things that I didn’t see or know about, and it kind of comes out later on when people are sharing those stories about him and the impact he’s had,” Brett says. “That’s kind of how he is, he was never out publicizing the things that he’s done, so it’s fun hearing those things from people that he’s impacted, because there’s no way he would have told us about this. Because he genuinely just does them and cares. I’m really proud of him and everything that he’s done, and it’s a great example to try to be like and to live up to.”